[amsat-bb] AO-40 K Band Breakfast

[Kc2hax@xxxxxxx]

Hi Folks,
This is to announce that thanks to Steve Diggs, W4EPI, Chairman of 19th Space 
Symposium and AMSAT-NA Annual Meeting, the 24 GHz Working Group Breakfast is 
now in the oficial program.
It will be an "informal" working session. Any symposium attendant is 
cordially invited to join us on Saturday morning from 7:00 am to 8:30 am. 
Meeting room to be announced. 
We plan to warm up the bagels in a dish focus with some microwave RF and to 
measure the attenuation produced by "coffee vapour" at 24GHz ;-)
Well... this is the program

AO-40 K Band (24 GHz), The Challenge

1.- The K-Band transmitter on board AO-40. (Better than Godivas and also 
coming from Belgium, guess what?)
    A brief presentation on the spacecraft K-Band transponder and theoretical 
link budget

2.- K-Band Ground Station Requirements. (The plumber's delight station 
revisited)
     Based on a typical 24 GHz Rx chain (Reflector, horn, preamp, BP filter, 
mixer, LO, IF...)
    and comparisons and differences from S and X band.

3.- K-Band equipment sourcing. (Keep this black-box behind the windscreen and 
do not steal the cop's thing, no use here!)
    Review of available K-band equipment, new, surplus, other sources.
     Test equipment for K band. What and where to look for.

4.- AO-40 K-band operations (n degrees of freedom and an extra hand).


Tom Haddon, K5VH and Ed Cole, AL7EB expert microwavers will be joining for an 
informal discussion on topics 2 and 3. Tom is the founder of the Roadrunners 
Microwave Group (www.k5rmg.org) in South Texas and will be doing a show and 
tell during the session. Better yet both Tom and Ed will be fresh back from 
Microwave Update and probably with a lot of news.
Don Woodward, KD4APP has been working hard putting together a wealth of 
information from the AO-40 K band pioneers George, G3WDG and Petra Suckling 
and Michael Fletcher, OH2AUE (Who has volunteered to review the slides that 
we have prepared) to cover topic #4 and I will cover #1 based on information 
and photographs kindly supplied by Danny Orban, ON4AOD.

I am most grateful to all of them and look forward to meet you in Atlanta.

Best 73 de antonio, kc2hax/ea4le
 
----
Via the amsat-bb mailing list at AMSAT.ORG courtesy of AMSAT-NA.
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe amsat-bb" to Majordomo@amsat.org